


these entanglements (they'll be the death of us)

by lucidities (incendiarism)



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Based on a Taylor Swift Song, Character Death, Class Differences, Complicated Relationships, F/F, F/M, Infidelity, Murder, Rated For Violence, Revenge, no body no crime au, rather unhinged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:35:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28426368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incendiarism/pseuds/lucidities
Summary: As the night flutters along, the old grandfather clock chiming every hour, the moonlight that streaks through the massive windows shifting slowly, Hyunjin feels her heart char and burn into something dark and traitorous. Terribly fond, violently affectionate, ultimately disastrous.The glittering diamond ring placed on Heejin’s wedding finger can only do so much to quell the flames.
Relationships: Jeon Heejin/Kim Hyunjin, Jeon Heejin/Original Character(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43
Collections: WIP OLYMPICS: WINTER 2020/21, violently tender





	these entanglements (they'll be the death of us)

**Author's Note:**

> that's right i'm back baby with more... bullshit. [ten second pause] i don't really have much else to say for myself other than no body, no crime by miss taylor swift has ruined me and this fic is pretty much a direct translation of those feelings. i do not condone murder but i do enjoy writing about it. thank you for clicking, please enjoy!

_how dare you be the kind of person I would immediately fall completely in love with and be devastated if you left // how dare you come and do that_

\- I want to get high my whole life with you, Hera Lindsay Bird

The day Hyunjin meets Heejin is a day that’s bathed in danger.

It’s unstable from inception, as if the mere concept of their two worlds colliding would be enough to throw everything off-balance. Not because anything about Heejin herself is dangerous, no, but rather the way her company makes Hyunjin feel. Capable of anything while simultaneously spiralling wildly out of control.

They weren’t ever supposed to meet, really.

Heejin is from the nicer side of town. An aura of luxury permeates her every move, something opulent and glamorous. Something in the way she dresses, in the way she carries herself, in the way she speaks. They shouldn’t have met; they shouldn’t have, except—

There is a party, rich folk mingling with other rich folk, someone’s birthday or engagement or anniversary. An event about connections, an event about showing off, an event about power.

Kim Hyunjin is there as hired extra help for the night: her job is to smile politely as people come in, take their coats, show them to their places. Her job is to remain absolutely invisible otherwise. Head ducked, tongue held, hands clasped.

Jeon Heejin is there as one of the esteemed guests.

And Hyunjin’s been doing work like this long enough that it’s become muscle memory. It’s easy enough to take care of all the manual things, robotic even, a rhythm that she lets herself fall into. Uninspired and flat, laborious and boring.

The antithesis to all of that, then, is running into Heejin. A wrench thrown deep into Hyunjin’s otherwise perfected machinery.

Pretty gown, pretty face. Their hands braid together as Heejin drags Hyunjin into one of the empty rooms tucked away into some secluded area of the mansion. It’s quiet, surreal. Hyunjin protests, but all in vain. Heejin shares drunken secrets. Drunken smiles.

As the night flutters along, the old grandfather clock chiming every hour, the moonlight that streaks through the massive windows shifting slowly, Hyunjin feels her heart char and burn into something dark and traitorous. Terribly fond, violently affectionate, ultimately disastrous. 

The glittering diamond ring placed on Heejin’s wedding finger can only do so much to quell the flames.

—

They fall into careful friendship after that. Careful, because Heejin is _married_. Careful, because she has more wealth at her disposal than Hyujin could ever even hope for. Careful, because things are no longer shiny and dreamy away from the party lights and empty glasses, and instead harsher and consequential.

Friendship, because despite all of the warning signs and alarm bells, Hyunjin is still endlessly enamored. Hopelessly, painfully drawn in.

Olive Garden. They meet at Olive Garden once a week, every Tuesday, no more, no less.

Heejin regals Hyunjin with whatever drama is going on in her life, details about her horrid mother-in-law or gossip about who’s dating who—and half of the names fly over Hyunjin’s head, but she nods along anyways. Hyunjin responds in turn with odd details about her job, little tidbits about ungrateful employers and dubious stains. 

Heejin always listens maybe more intently than she should, laughing in amusement and gasping in horror when appropriate. And maybe Hyunjin should feel a little patronized. Maybe she should put her foot down.

Maybe she should hit the emergency brakes, pray that they work, bring this whole ordeal to a screeching stop before things go further because it’s already so much, too much.

She doesn’t, though. She squeezes her eyes shut, bites her lips bloody and red, holds on bone-tight until her knuckles turn white and pale, stumbles along this stupid, _stupid_ joyride, and chases after Heejin—because what they have isn’t enough, it’s never been enough. From the moment the two of them met, it’s never been enough, and it’ll never be enough, not with the inescapable truth of their situation.

They were never meant to meet.

Nothing good will come out of this. But what’s done is done, and now all there is left for Hyunjin to do is wait and brace for an inevitable, bone-crushing impact.

—

It’s five months into their friendship when things start to go sour. Heejin’s storytelling loses its original animated quality, her typical cheeriness turning forced as the days go by. Her eyebags grow more pronounced—some combination of sleep deprivation and being too exhausted to then cover it up with make-up—the spidery black of her eyelashes fanning out against bruisish blues and blotchy purples whenever she yawns.

She has no right to still look that pretty, Hyunjin muses vaguely, but she shoves that thought to the back of her traitorous head in favor of being a good, supportive friend instead.

Concerned comments asking if Heejin’s okay, reminders that she can always talk to Hyunjin about whatever is on her mind, because it’s not as if Hyunjin has anything better to do.

Heejin always bats away her probing with a shake of her head, a few dismissive words, and a lilting laugh—and Hyunjin drops the subject to avoid breaching her boundaries—but the haunted look caught in her eyes never seems to go away.

—

It’s six months into their friendship when Heejin finally confesses what she’s been losing sleep over.

“Infidelity,” she says quietly, taking a sip of her wine afterwards. “I think… I think he’s cheating on me. No, not just think, there’s far too much evidence—I _know_ he’s cheating on me.”

It’s barely a few sentences, but it sets off something monstrous churning inside of Hyunjin, something ugly. Something that would do anything for the woman sitting in front of her, anything at all. “Why? What happened?”

“He—he keeps on coming home later and later. Every evening, reeking of someone else’s perfume, lipstick smeared across his mouth. There are payments on our joint account for jewelry that I’ve never seen, jewelry that can’t be mine. And he, he just doesn’t _look_ at me the same way anymore.”

Heejin shudders a little. Hyunjin seethes.

“He used to look at me like I was something precious, special. Now he looks at me like I’m just another servant. An obstacle to getting what he truly wants.”

Hyunjin _seethes_.

—

Another week goes by. Heejin shows up at their usual table looking much less fragile this time, a steely sense of determination in her eyes instead.

“I think I’m going to call him out for it,” she says as soon as they’ve gotten past their usual pleasantries while waiting for their usual orders to arrive. “I mean, better to nip the problem at the bud early, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Saturday night. Saturday night, when he gets home, I’ll do it. I—I refuse to just be some side-piece for him; I refuse.”

“Of course.” Hyunjin’s fingers toy with a loose thread coming from the tablecloth. Her heart is lurching into her throat, but she can’t quite tell what’s causing it. Whether it’s worry or frantic delight or another emotion entirely. “What if something goes wrong though? What if he takes it poorly?”

Heejin laughs and fixes Hyunjin with a look that’s a little maniacal at the edges, rough and nothing like the supposed rich girl image that she’s supposed to have. It reminds Hyunjin of why she’d been taken so hard by her in the first place.

“Well, you’ll avenge me, right?”

—

Heejin and Hyunjin do not talk to each other outside of their weekly appointments. There’s this unspoken agreement hanging delicately in the air that their interactions begin and end within the confines of their designated booth at Olive Garden. The booth and that one dreamy night stolen away at the party all that time ago, of course.

Usually, Hyunjin is happy enough to keep her mouth shut and wait for her scraps. Because even if Heejin seems to somehow enjoy spending her company, Hyunjin knows that she doesn’t really belong in her life. That as fast as she was dragged into this story, she could just as quickly be effaced.

This week, however, she’s filled with this jittering sort of anxiety, and it’s all she can do to stop herself from giving Heejin a call, asking how things went, crossing her fingers, hoping for the best, dreaming of something more if things did go accordingly—all these silly, desperate things.

She holds back though—some things just aren’t done in a friendship like this.

Instead, she is patient.

She holds her tongue when she happens to drive by Heejin’s house on the way back from a grocery run, when she notices that her husband’s truck is sporting new tires. All she feels is dark anticipation, morbidly curious or curiously morbid, but she holds her tongue.

She is less patient when Heejin doesn’t show up at their usual time on Tuesday. Less patient still when she scours the town and can’t find any sign of her, not at her job and not at home. She wills herself to hold it together; she wills herself _not to overreact, heaven forbid_ , but then she catches wind of a new rumor.

 _There’s a new mistress in the Jeon residence_ , is what she hears. _Heejin’s husband had reported her missing, and not even a day later she’d moved in—sleeps in her old bed and everything._

How scandalous.

Hyunjin puts two and two together. There is no body to be found, no proof—but she knows, without an ounce of doubt, that the entire situation reeks of foul play.

And, ringing in her ears and chest, anthemic and mantra-like and all consuming, are Heejin’s final words.

_You’ll avenge me, right?_

—

Hyunjin, despite everything, holds onto her patience, plays for the long-run, and bides her time. She gets herself hired as a maid at the Jeon residence, and then she waits. Figures out the household’s patterns, routines, habits. Plots and plans for the right moment.

Months and months later, she spots her opening and goes for it.

A bottle of bleach. A boating license that she got when she was fifteen. A butcher knife swiped from her kitchen. A large black garbage bag. A promise extracted from Heejin’s sister to _swear, swear on your life or so help me God, that I was with you_. An empty house, save for Hyunjin and Heejin’s ex-husband.

It’s almost too easy.

—

Funnily enough, it’s not the kill itself that rattles Hyunjin, but rather the clean-up. 

Somehow—despite the fact that she’d prepared for a mess—she’d gotten it into her head that it would be a quick, neat little ordeal. But tucked behind the quiet ideal of a tidy murder is the gruesome reality.

There’s so much blood. So much red, warm and dark, gushing from stab wounds and spilling onto Hyunjin’s hands. Staining the otherwise pristine tile of the kitchen.

Heejin and Hyunjin never should’ve met.

Distantly, in a cloudy, cotton-filled part of her head, Hyunjin wonders rather hysterically just how she got herself here.

 _Heejin and Hyunjin never should’ve met._ But—

The blood pooling at her feet reminds her, somehow, of the wine Heejin had been drinking the day they first got to know each other, all those lifetimes ago, and everything settles again. 

Meeting Heejin had filled her with some intimate sort of obsession. And then, losing her had left her behind with a frigid sort of hollowness. A frigid sort of hollowness matched with blind, numbing rage. One that she has to channel into action, somehow, or else she fears that it may eat her alive.

_You’ll avenge me, right?_

_I will. I promise._

—

A body is never found, a chilling sense of deja vu to the last disappearance, but a body is almost unnecessary with the way the townsfolk buzz about the alleged crime.

If the first missing person had been intriguing, the second— _the husband nonetheless, can you believe it?_ —is maddening. Worse still is the fact that his mistress had taken out a hefty life insurance policy right before he died. Worse still is the fact that his mistress used to be in the same social standing as Hyunjin, the scrappy sort of girl who would probably do anything to get her hands on money.

Hyunjin is barely questioned, her alibi about being with Heejin’s sister easily enough to let her off. The townsfolk don’t think to suspect the maid, not when there’s a much more interesting narrative to be spun with the mistress. Something out of a mystery novel almost, something about love and misplaced trust. Adultery and sin.

Murder and oh-so-dirty greed.

No one will ever be able to prove anything, so the rumors only fester and grow wilder and wilder. No one will ever be able to prove anything, so Hyunjin sinks back into the comfort of being virtually invisible in a town like this.

The mistress, she suspects that Hyunjin is guilty of course—but each time Hyunjin can only laugh.

There is only one culprit that the people are satisfied with framing, and it sure as hell isn’t her.

—

It’s quiet.

A few months have passed since the infamous double disappearances, the ones that had set the town whispering and frenzied for a while, and the people and press are finally seeming to tire out of covering the same story over and over again.

Hyunjin would be lying if she were to say that she wasn’t at least a little disappointed that the commotion has already run its course, but she supposes that everything has an expiration date these days.

Her life is calm now, back to the barely stable flow of odd jobs and just barely making ends meet. She cleans and tidies and smiles stiffly at people who couldn’t give a damn about her. She tries to keep her mind off a certain girl with pretty words and a prettier smile. She throws herself into the monotony of work, of staying alive, nothing more, nothing less.

She tells herself that this is enough, that she’s had enough excitement for a lifetime, that she’s content like this. Denial isn’t the prettiest of states, but it’s useful. It keeps her moving past the fallout of all her actions—functional, if only barely.

It’s quiet when a knock startles her out of whatever menial task she’d been half-heartedly completing before. Hyunjin doesn’t really get visitors, or at least none of importance, so she doesn’t think much of it as she picks her way to the door of her shoebox apartment and wrenches it open.

At the welcome mat stands a figure with their head bowed. They look a little worse for the wear, tattered and dirty clothing, scuffed and muddied sneakers. They look like they’re falling apart a little at the seams. They look so, so achingly familiar.

“ _Heejin?_ I thought you were—” _Dead_. It remains unsaid, but hangs in the air between them. Sharp and brittle. A jab at the gravity of the situation that they’re in.

Her head lifts. A ghost of a smile plays across her face, though under the right lighting Hyunjin could be convinced that it’s really a grimace.

“No, it’ll take a lot more than that to kill me. And… well, that wasn’t quite what I had in mind by revenge, but I suppose it works as well.”

A short laugh, quick and barking, before Heejin lets herself into the apartment, not bothering to wait for Hyunjin to invite her inside.

“But yes, Hyunjin, I’m alive. And, oh, where do I even begin?”

**Author's Note:**

> HEY if you've managed to stick around. thank you for reading! any and all comments + kudos are much appreciated. even a one word "cool" would make my day. also it's four am so apologies if this is? a little all over the place but when is unhinged fic not. if you enjoy this style of fic, might i offer you this [collection](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/unhinged) of similarly themed works for a variety of fandoms? otherwise, have a nice day!
> 
> twt: [@ssamdarling](https://twitter.com/ssamdarling)  
> cc: [panoramas](https://curiouscat.me/panoramas)  
> 
> 
> potential inspo list coming when it is not this late / when i feel like it!


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